World Religions in Historical Perspective
Seminar led by Dr. Timothy Kelly and Dr. Christina Michelmore, Chatham College

We can see in our nation and the world how religious belief and behavior shapes phenomena ranging from significant international wars to the ways individuals understand their own personal experiences.  This seminar will examine the history of each of the world's three main monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as explore the history of other religious traditions and practices.  We will employ a variety of media, including films and documentaries, to help participants better understand the various roles that religion has played in the world.  Though we often recognize that religion is significant, we typically have not had the opportunity to study it academically.  Teachers joining this seminar will need no prior background in religious study.  Our emphasis will be on the history of various religious traditions, rather than on their theologies-save for where a focus on theology is important to our historical understanding.

Pittsburgh, Then and Now
Seminar led by Dr. Janet Stocks, Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh is at once the quintessential American city and a place unique unto itself.  In 5this seminar we will look at Pittsburgh, past, present and future through a number of different lenses:  historical, economic, environmental, sociological, and artistic among them.  Through guest speakers, films, reading and discussion we will explore not all, but much of what has made Pittsburgh the place we love today. 

Teachers at all levels and in all subject should find something of interest about which to develop a curriculum unit.

Pre-Columbian Cultures of Latin America
Seminar led by Dr. Karen Goldman, Chatham College

This seminar will explore the history, culture, art and the legacy of the civilizations that existed in Mesoamerica and South America before the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadores.  The great monuments of these earlier peoples at Teotihuacan, Tenochtlitan, Chichen Itza, Tikal,m or Machu Pichu provide powerful visual images of the past glory and scale of these ancient civilizations.  These images are a startling contrast with the modern social, economic and political position of the Latin American descendants of these cultures.  Recent years have seen a resurgence in movements by the indigenous societies for greater independence and acceptance of their identities as well as a place within the national identity of the modern "Latin" nation states.

This seminar examines the nature of the ancient cultural systems and their virtually 3,000 year long continuous record of cultural continuity and change.  Using insights from cultural studies, archaeology, art history and ethnography we will seek to understand these societies and their past and future place within the region today.  The seminar will follow a topical and comparative approach rather than a regional and chronological survey.  We will focus deeply on a narrow range of the societies which flourished in Central and South America; the complex systems we know as the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas.  However, to best understand and explore the development of these societies we will also take into consideration their neighbors, ancestors, and descendants.

The seminar will be of interest to teachers of world cultures, world history, Spanish and any others who wish to focus on the unique constellation of cultural, historical, technological and artistic elements that characterized pre-Columbian society.

War and Peace in America
Seminar led by Dr. Vagel Keller, Carnegie Mellon University

This seminar addresses the history of the United States from the perspective of armed conflict waged on its soil.  We will devote a significant amount of time to the major wars that punctuated the century between the French and Indian War (1753-60) and the Civil War (1861-65).  But we will also explore the story of teh more or less continuous warfare that characterized life on the shifting frontiers between Anglo-American and Native American societies from Jamestown to Wounded Knee - and beyond.  This is not a military history seminar.  Rather it will treat military operations in the context of the cultural, environmental, technological, and global political-economic factors that influenced them.  Along the way, we will try to reach a common understanding of the root causes and long term effects of this legacy of armed conflict on American society.  We will also try to come to grips with how and why Americans - whatever their nativity-made war on each other, and what that has meant to the way that legacy shaped our society.  This seminar will meet on Mondays.

Fractals and Chaos
Seminar led by Dr. Richard Holman, Carnegie Mellon University

Fractals structures appear everywhere in nature.  They also lend themselves to being discussed at all levels, from pretty pictures to deep mathematics.  Likewise, most realistic natural phenomena exhibit chaotic behavior; predicting the weather is a prime example of this. 

In this seminar, we will define and learn how to recognize fractality and chaos and how to work with these concepts.  There will be some mathematical sophistication involved (some algebra and geometry) so this may be suited best for middle to high school teachers, although some of the concepts may be amenable to discussion at the elementary level.

Cultural Influences on Art and Society:  African Art in Context
Seminar led by Dr. Elisabeth Roark, Chatham College

This seminar will examine what African art can teach us about aspects of African culture such as religion, aesthetics, social relationships, economies, conceptions of nature, and political structures in traditional societies.  Conversely, building these contexts will further illuminate the works of art.  Seminar Fellows will engage directly with the Olkes Collection of African Art at Chatham College which contains over 600 works from West, Central, and East sub-Sahara Africa.  Each week we will explore, for example, object related to ritual, such as masks and spirit figures; objects related to divination, such as beaded stoles and frictional oracles; and objects that their makers consider primarily functional, such as door locks and woven bowls, that are collected by westerners as works of art.  Through readings and discussion, we will look at the impact of colonization, evolving perceptions of African art in the west, and how to present African art to an American public.  Primary concerns include learning how works of art can be used to teach a range of subjects, and how "reading" works of art can provide as much insight into a culture as reading a text.  This seminar will be held on Mondays, 4:00 - 6:00 pm., at the Chatham College Art Gallery.

Children's Literature-The Words of Childhood:  Exploring Children's Literature
Seminar led by Ms. Nancy Alberts, Chatham College

This seminar will study various aspects of children's literature through an examination of the wide range of material available from infancy to adolescence, from classic to contemporary.  As we study how literature for children has evolved over the years, we will explore the influence of the social history of childhood on the genre.

Does children's literature accurately reflect the culture of childhood?  More importantly, what role do books play in the life of teh contemporary child?  How can we instill a love of literature in today's youth?

Well Played:  Shakespeare and Genre
Seminar led by Ms. Rebecca E. May, Carnegie Mellon University

In this seminar we will sample some of Shakespeare's plays, encompassing the genres of history, tragedy, comedy, and romance.  How does Shakespeare use the genre as a structuring framework to guide our reading expectations?  How can he, at the same time, demonstrate a staggering variability in the ways that generic patterns appear in plays of the same genre?  Why do some plays demonstrate generic hybridity, and what is the result of the grafting of two genres?  In addition to considering these questions, we will discuss the plays with an eye toward character, action, images, and linguistic clusters.  Plays may include Richard III, I Henry IV, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, The Winter's Tale, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and All is True, but reading materials may also be tailored to consider the Fellows' individual curriculum goals.

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This page was last updated:  February 24, 2006
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